Cover not available

Article published In: Verbal and gestural expression of motion and spatial events / L’expression verbale et gestuelle du mouvement et de l’espace: New evidence from different age groups and linguistic environments / nouveaux arguments en provenance de différents groupes d’âge et de différents environnements linguistiques
Edited by Kateřina Fibigerová, Jean-Marc Colletta and Michèle Guidetti
[Language, Interaction and Acquisition 9:1] 2018
► pp. 69–100

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

French-English bilingual children’s motion event communication shows crosslinguistic influence in speech but not gesture

 | University of Alberta
 | University of Central Lancashire
 | University of Alberta
Published online: 9 May 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.15006.mil
Abstract
Bilinguals sometimes show crosslinguistic influence from one language to another while speaking (or gesturing). Adult bilinguals have also shown crosslinguistic influence in gestures as well as speech, suggesting an underlying conceptualization that is similar for both languages. The primary purpose of the present study is to test if the same is true of simultaneous French-English bilingual children in speaking and gesturing about motion. If so, they might show different patterns from both French and English monolinguals. Furthermore, we examined whether there were developmental changes between early and middle childhood. French-English bilingual and French and English monolingual children watched two cartoons and described them. In speech, the bilinguals differed from the English monolinguals, using more lexicalizations of the Path of motion in token numbers but not in type. They did not differ from the French monolinguals. In gestures, all children used a majority of Path gestures. There were few age-related changes. We argue that in speech, the bilinguals conceptualize their two languages differently, but show some crosslinguistic influence due to processing. Gestures may not show this same pattern, because they serve to highlight the important parts of the discourse.
Résumé
Les bilingues montrent parfois l’influence d’une langue tout en parlant (ou en gestualisant) l’autre, ce qui constitue l’influence interlangue. Les bilingues adultes ont également montré une influence interlangue dans les gestes ainsi que dans le discours, ce qui suggère une conceptualisation sous-jacente similaire pour les deux langues. L’objectif principal de cette étude était de vérifier s’il en est de même pour les enfants bilingues français-anglais simultanés qui parlent et font des gestes à propos du mouvement. Si tel est le cas, ils pourraient montrer des patterns différents à la fois des monolingues français et anglais. En second lieu, nous avons examiné s’il y avait des changements développementaux entre la petite enfance et l’enfance. Des enfants bilingues français-anglais et des enfants monolingues français et anglais ont regardé deux dessins animés et les ont décrits. En parlant, les bilingues différaient des monolingues anglais, utilisant davantage de lexicalisations de la trajectoire du mouvement dans le nombre d’occurrences mais pas dans le nombre de catégories; sur ce plan, ils ne diffèrent pas des monolingues français. Dans les gestes, tous les enfants ont utilisé une majorité de gestes de trajectoire. Il y avait peu de changements liés à l’âge. Nous soutenons qu’en parlant, les bilingues conceptualisent leurs deux langues différemment, mais montrent une certaine influence translangue due au traitement. Les gestes peuvent ne pas montrer ce même pattern parce qu’ils servent à souligner les parties importantes du discours.
Article outline
  • 1.Bilingualism impacts language usage and representation
    • 1.1Crosslinguistic differences in the expression of motion events
      • 1.1.1Monolinguals
      • 1.1.2Bilinguals
    • 1.2Development of motion event expressions in children
      • 1.2.1Monolinguals
      • 1.2.2Bilinguals
    • 1.3Conceptualization, processing, and crosslinguistic influence
    • 1.4This study
      • 1.4.1Confounding issues
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and procedure
    • 2.3Coding
      • 2.3.1Word types in the narrative
      • 2.3.2Coding speech for motion events
      • 2.3.3Coding gesture for motion events
      • 2.3.4Reliability of coding
    • 2.4Analyses
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Total number of word types
    • 3.2Lexicalization patterns in speech
      • 3.2.1Path types
      • 3.2.2Path tokens
      • 3.2.3Manner tokens
    • 3.3Motion encoded in gesture
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Bilinguals and crosslinguistic influence
      • 4.1.1Crosslinguistic influence and shared conceptualization
      • 4.1.2Crosslinguistic influence and competition among lemmas
      • 4.1.3Patterns inconsistent with both explanations
    • 4.2Gesture
    • 4.3Potentially confounding issues
      • 4.3.1Limitations and future directions
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (74)
References
Allen, S., Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., Ishizuka, T., & Fujii, M. (2007). Language-specific and universal influences in children’s packaging of manner and path: A comparison of English, Japanese and Turkish. Cognition, 1021, 16–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, A. & Gullberg, M. (2008). Bidirectional crosslinguistic influence in L1-L2 encoding of manner in speech and gesture: A study of Japanese speakers of English. Studies of Second Language Acquisition, 301, 225–251. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2010). Changes in encoding of PATH of motion in a first language during acquisition of a second language. Cognitive Linguistics, 211, 263–286. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Multicompetence and native speaker variation in clausal packaging in Japanese. Second Language Research, 281, 415–442. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). L1-L2 convergence in clausal packaging in Japanese and English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 161, 477–494. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cadierno, T. & Ruiz, L. (2006). Motion events in Spanish L2 acquisition. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 41, 183–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Choi, S. & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition, 411, 83–121. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cifuentes-Férez, P. (2010). The semantics of the English and the Spanish motion verb lexicons. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 81, 233–271. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daller, M., Treffers-Daller, J., & Furman, R. (2011). Transfer of conceptualisation patterns in bilinguals: The construal of motion events in Turkish and German. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 141, 95–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Demir, Ö. E., So, W. C., Özyürek, A., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Turkish-and-English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture. Language and Cognitive Processes, 271, 844–867. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Filipovic, L. (2011). Speaking and remembering in one or two languages: Bilingual vs. monolingual lexicalization and memory for motion events. International Journal of Bilingualism, 151, 466–485. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Furman, R., Küntay, A., & Özyürek, A. (2014). Early language-specificity of children’s event encoding in speech and gesture: Evidence from caused motion in Turkish. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 291, 620–634. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Boivin, I. & Nicoladis, E. (1996). Bilingual children talking with monolingual adults: A study of bilingual communicative competence. Applied Psycholinguistics, 171, 427–442. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J. (1995). Language differentiation in early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 221, 611–631. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gullberg, M., Hendriks, H., & Hickmann, M. (2008). Learning to talk and gesture about motion in French. First Language, 281, 200–236. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hendriks, H., Hickmann, M., & Demagny, A. -C. (2008). How adult English learners of French express caused motion: A comparison with English and French natives. Acquisition et Interaction en Langue Etrangère, 271, 15–41. Available: [URL]
Hervé, C., Serratrice, L., & Corley, M. (2016). Dislocations in French – English bilingual children: An elicitation study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(5), 987–1000. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M. (2003). Children’s discourse: person, space and time across languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2006). The relativity of motion in first language acquisition. In M. Hickmann & S. Robert (Eds.), Space across languages: linguistic systems and cognitive categories (pp. 281–308). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2007). Static and dynamic location in French: Developmental and crosslinguistic perspectives. In M. Aurnague, M. Hickmann, & L. Vieu (Eds.), The categorization of spatial entities in language and cognition (pp. 205–231). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M. & Hendriks, H. (2006). Static and dynamic location in French and in English. First Language, 261, 103–135. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M., Hendriks, H., & Champaud, C. (2008). Typological constraints on motion in French child language. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, S. Ervin-Tripp, N. Budwig, S. Özçalışkan, & K. Nakamura (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 307–330). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M., Hendriks, H., & Gullberg, M. (2011). Developmental perspectives on the expression of motion in speech and gesture: A comparison of French and English. Language, Interaction, and Acquisition, 21, 129–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickmann, M., Taranne, P., & Bonnet, P. (2009). Motion in first language acquisition: Manner and path in French and English child language. Journal of Child Language, 361, 705–741. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hohenstein, J., Eisenberg, A., & Naigles, L. (2006). Is he floating across or crossing afloat? Cross-influence of L1 and L2 in Spanish-English bilingual adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 91, 249–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iakovleva, T. & Hickmann, M. (2012). Contraintes typologiques dans l’acquisition d’une langue étrangère: L’expression du mouvement chez les apprenants russophones du français. Langages, 1881, 41–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jarvis, S. & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jay, T. B. (2003). The psychology of language. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kita, S. & Özyürek, A. (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language, 481, 16–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krauss, R. M., Chen, Y., & Gottesman, R. F. (2000). Lexical gestures and lexical access: A process model. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and Gesture (pp. 261–283). New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kupisch, T. (2007). Determiners in German-Italian children: What they tell us about the relation between language influence and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 101, 57–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 221, 1–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liceras, J. M., Fuertes, R. F., & de la Fuente, A. A. (2012). Overt subjects and copula omission in the Spanish and the English grammar of English – Spanish bilinguals: On the locus and directionality of interlinguistic influence. First Language, 321, 88–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mandler, J. M. (1996). Preverbal representation and language. In P. Bloom, M. A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M. F. Garrett (Eds.), Language and space (pp. 365–384). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McNeill, D., & Duncan, S. (2000). Growth points in thinking-for-speaking. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 141–161). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, N. & Hulk, A. (2001). Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 41, 1–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munske, H. H. (1986). What are mixed languages? In P. H. Nelde, P. S. Ureland & I. Clarkson (Eds.), Language contact in Europe (pp. 81–95). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Naigles, L. R., Eisenberg, A. R., Kako, E. T., Highter, M., & McGraw, N. (1998). Speaking of motion: Verb use in English and Spanish. Language and Cognitive Processes, 131, 521–549. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Navarro, S., & Nicoladis, E. (2005). Describing motion events in adult L2 Spanish narratives. In Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages (pp. 102–107). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective-noun strings by preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 91, 15–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Why does bilingualism affect language and cognitive development? In J. Altarriba & R. Heredia (Eds.), An introduction to bilingualism: Principles and practices (pp. 167–181). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Cross-linguistic influence in French-English bilingual children’s possessive constructions. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 151, 320–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Measuring language dominance in bilingual children: Ramifications on predicting crosslinguistic influence. In C. Silva-Corvalán & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds.) Operationalising and measuring language dominance (pp. 219–234). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Brisard, F. (2002). Encoding motion in gestures and speech: Are there differences in bilingual children’s French and English? In E. V. Clark (Ed.), Space in language. Location, motion, path, and manner. The Proceedings of the 31st Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 60–68). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Gavrila, A. (2015). Cross-linguistic influence in Welsh-English bilingual children’s adjectival constructions. Journal of Child Language, 421, 903–916. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Gynane, H. (2014). French-English bilinguals’ motion encoding in speech and in gestures. Unpublished manuscript. University of Alberta.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Jiang, Z. (2015). Language and cognitive predictors of lexical selection in storytelling for monolingual and sequential bilingual children. Unpublished paper. University of Alberta.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Marchak, K. (2011). Le carte blanc or la carte blanche? Bilingual children’s acquisition of French adjective agreement. Language Learning, 611, 734–758. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Palmer, A. & Marentette, P. (2007). The role of type and token frequency in using past tense morphemes correctly. Developmental Science, 101, 237–254. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Rose, A., & Foursha-Stevenson, C. (2010). Talking for speaking and cross-linguistic transfer in preschool bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 131, 345–370. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E., Song, J., & Marentette, P. (2012). Do young bilinguals acquire past tense morphology like monolinguals, only later? Evidence from French-English and Chinese-English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 331, 457–479. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. & Yin, H. (2010). Evidence for the role of frequency in the acquisition of lexicalization patterns of Chinese-English bilingual children. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 381, 288–322.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oh, K. J. (2003). Manner and Path in motion event descriptions in English and Korean. In B. Beachley, A. Brown, & F. Conlin (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 580–590). Boston, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ochsenbauer, A. K. (2010). The impact of language-specific factors in first language acquisition: The expression of motion in French and German (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation). Université Paris 8, Vincennes, Saint-Denis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş. & Slobin, D. I. (1999). Learning how to search for the frog: Expression of manner of motion in English, Spanish, and Turkish. In A. Greenhill, H. Littlefield & C. Tano (Eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development: Vol. 2 (pp. 163–174). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özçalışkan, Ş., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development. Cognition, 961, B101–B113. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). When gesture-speech combinations do and do not index linguistic change. Language and Cognitive Processes, 241, 190–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Allen, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., & Ishizuka, T. (2008). Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture: Motion events in English and Turkish. Developmental Psychology, 441, 1040–1054. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Papafragou, A., Massey, C., & Gleitman, L. (2002). Shake, rattle, 'n' roll: The representation of motion in language and cognition. Cognition, 841, 189–219. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2006). When English proposes what Greek presupposes: The cross-linguistic encoding of motion events. Cognition, 981, B75–B87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J. & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 181, 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J. & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of the input? Journal of Child Language, 301, 371–393. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J. & Nicoladis, E. (2007). The influence of dominance and sociolinguistic context on bilingual preschoolers’ language choice. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 101, 277–297. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2009). Conceptual representation in the bilingual lexicon and second language vocabulary learning. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 125–160). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1987). Thinking for speaking. In J. Aske, N. Beery, L. Michaelis, & H. Filip (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society (pp. 435–445). Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smithson, L., Paradis, J., & Nicoladis, E. (2014). Bilingualism and vocabulary achievement: Could socio-cultural context make a difference? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. FirstView Article pp. 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stam, G. (2006). Thinking for speaking about motion: L1 and L2 speech and gesture. IRAL, 441, 145–171. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description (pp. 57–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1991). Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 480–519). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Volume II: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Stam, Gale, Kimberly Urbanski, James Lantolf & Tetyana Smotrova
2023. How concept-based language instruction works in teaching thinking for speaking in an L2. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 61:1 ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Engemann, Helen
2022. How (not) to cross a boundary: Crosslinguistic influence in simultaneous bilingual children's event construal. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25:1 ► pp. 42 ff. DOI logo
Engemann, Helen
2022. Entropy convergence in early bilinguals’ syntactic packaging. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Tusun, Alimujiang
2022. Uyghur–Chinese Adult Bilinguals’ Construal of Voluntary Motion Events. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Tusun, Alimujiang
2023. Uyghur–Chinese early successive adult bilinguals’ construal of caused motion events. Language and Cognition 15:3 ► pp. 427 ff. DOI logo
Tusun, Alimujiang
2024. Uyghur–Chinese early successive bilingual children's acquisition of voluntary motion expressions. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 27:4 ► pp. 642 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue